ROY KEANE IS Irish sport’s greatest enigma.
Hyper-committed and ruthless on the pitch, he’s always had a disturbingly rational and measured way of expressing his feelings off it (unless you’re Patrick Vieira, but more about that later…).
At his best, he was the one the greatest midfielders of his generation, Manchester United’s most successful captain and an irresistable motivational force.
At his worst, he was a over-the-top lunge waiting to happen and an egomaniac incapable of subordinating his own interests to those of the team.
In celebration of the big guy’s 40th, here’s a selection of his greatest hits (in some cases literal ones).
Cobh Ramblers
Keane is one of football’s great self-made men. Not blessed with a prodigious talent or physical presence, his teens were a period of incremental progress that saw him move through a series of local youth teams to a semi-professional contract at Cobh Ramblers.
Undeterred by critics who claimed he was “just too small” to compete at a high level, the midfielder’s dedication eventually succeeded in catching the eye of Nottingham Forest scout Noel McCabe. The resulting move to Brian Clough’s side would have been a mammoth, up-by-the-bootstraps victory in itself, but Keane’s journey was just beginning…
Manchester United
It didn’t take long for Keane’s committed performances for Forest to secure a “promotion” to Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. It was there, as a tireless presence in the centre of midfield, that the Cork man set about building his legacy.
The good (and there was a lot of it).
The bad.
And the downright ugly.
The final incident, in which he essentially ended the career of Manchester City’s Alf-Inge Haaland, generated further controversy when he later admitted that the “tackle” had been motivated purely by vengence. Or as he put it in his autobiography:
“I’d waited long enough. I f****** hit him hard. The ball was there (I think). Take that you c***. And don’t ever stand over me sneering about fake injuries… My attitude was, fuck him. What goes around comes around. He got his just rewards. He fucked me over and my attitude is an eye for an eye.”
Keane left United in 2005, after escalating tensions with the team’s management led to an intractable, barely private stand-off. He would depart under a cloud of acrimony and allegations of arrogance, but also as one of the most decorated captains in the history of English football, whose list of honours even included an unprecedented treble (of the Premiership, FA Cup and Champion’s League) in 1999.
Saipan
A couple of years before his relationship with Alex Ferguson hit breaking point, Keane had a falling out with another management team, this time during the build-up to Ireland’s 2002 World Cup campaign in Japan and South Korea.
Unsatisfied with the squad’s training facilities on the Pacific island of Saipan, an incensed Keane took his concerns to manager Mick McCarthy.
What did or didn’t happen next has become the subject of the sort of obsessive, conspiracy-minded speculation usually reserved for political assassinations, but the consequences of the collision remain undeniable: the Cork native forfeited his captaincy and left the squad, on the eve of international football’s most prestigous tournament, no less, to return to England.
For better or worse, Saipan burned– nay, seared– Keane into the Irish collective consciousness.
Sunderland
After calling time on his playing career at the end of the 2005/6 sesaon, Keane was touted as a possible successor to Gordon Strachan as manager of SPL giants Celtic.
Ever the contrarian, he instead opted to take the reins of Niall Quinn’s Sunderland four disastrous games into their 2006/7 campaign. A predictably harsh disciplinarian, the novice manager succeeded in taking the northern outfit from a lowly 23rd position in the league to the summit of the table at season’s end.
Winning promotion: believe it or not, this is Roy’s happy face.
Keane’s spell as a top-flight manager wasn’t his happiest hour however. After narrowly ensuring Sunderland’s Premier League survival in their first season with the big boys, he resigned four months into the 2008/2009 season, citing irreconcilable differences with club chairman and old buddy Niall Quinn as part of the reason.
Ipswich
Then it was on to Portman Road for the final act (to date) of Keano’s managerial career. His one full season in charge of Ipswich started in chaos, as the team started the campaign with a 14-game winless streak. Eventually, they recovered to achieve a semi-respectable finish in the middle of the pile. But, when last season started off with a similarly iffy trajectory, the board wasted little time, giving Keane the chop in January.
Since then, he has been linked with jobs in Australia and New Zealand and even a potential bid to buy Cambridge United. What’s next for the boy Roy?
